1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic timepiece displaying time with hands and being equipped with a hand position detecting mechanism.
2. Description of Related Art
In an electronic timepiece driving its hands with a stepping motor, for example, if a strong magnet is situated in the vicinity of the electronic timepiece, the rotor of the stepping motor does sometimes not rotate although drive pulses are supplied, and the hands are not driven.
An electronic timepiece equipped with a function of detecting the positions of its hands has conventionally been proposed (see, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2009-085674), which timepiece detected the positions by forming a penetration hole in each of the gears rotating in conjunction with the hands, respectively, and setting the penetration holes to appear at a detection position when the hands were situated at a predetermined position to detect the penetration holes with a photointerrupter or the like and thereby to detect the positions of the hands.
There can be a case where stops of the hands owing to an external factor extend over a long period of time, for example, a case where an electronic timepiece is left as it is in the neighborhood of a strong magnet. In this case, if the position detection of the hands is continuously being performed from the detection of the stops of the hands to the detection of the next rotations of the hands while supplying the stepping motor with drive pulses, the output of the drive pulses and the position detection of the hands are uselessly executed many times to cause a remarkable increase of power consumption.
The present invention provides an electronic timepiece equipped with a hand position detecting mechanism which electronic timepiece can suppress the remarkable increase of the power consumption thereof at the time of stops of the hands thereof.